Obesity Prevention Works Best in the Under-5 Crowd

By Katherine Hobson

Given that it’s so tough for the already-obese to shed weight, prevention would appear to be the key — and kids have been the primary focus of those efforts, including the White House’s own plan.

But a study presented at an obesity conference in Sweden suggests the kind of community-based interventions that involve schools, parents and health-care institutions really work best in kids under age five. After that, it gets a lot tougher.

The study compared three demonstration projects in Australia, each targeting thousands of kids in different age groups. The three-year program for the under-5s, delightfully called “Romp & Chomp,” cut the prevalence of overweight and obesity by about 3% compared to a control group. A program for primary schoolers reduced the weight gained by about 2.2 pounds compared to the controls, but didn’t budge the prevalence of overweight and obesity. Finally, a program aimed at adolescents “had virtually no impact on weight gain,” the study abstract says.

The youngest kids “seem to be the most susceptible to change,” said study author Boyd Swinburn, chair of population health and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Obesity Prevention at Australia’s Deakin University, in a press release. “For primary school children … there’s enough evidence to say we should roll out what we know.” Adolescents are another matter.

“There’s sort of an inverse relationship between an intervention like this and the complexity of an individual’s food environment,” Marlene Schwartz, deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, tells the Health Blog. Preschool kids are pretty much limited to the food given to them by adults, but as kids get older their ability to pick and purchase their own food increases — plus they’ve seen a lot of commercials for less-than-healthful foods over the years.

So if a teenager has the opportunity and money to purchase his choice of food before school, on breaks, after school and on weekends, the effects of a program sponsored by their high school or community group are likely going to be far less. “If we were capable of making as big a change in the environment of an adult or adolescent [as with a preschooler], we’d probably see as big a change,” Schwartz says.

Teens and adults can do their best to create an environment that will support their goals, she says. For example, don’t keep half-gallons of ice cream in the house if you’re tempted to eat more than the recommended half-cup serving. Instead, make ice cream an out-of-the-home treat, or buy individual serving containers.

As a policy matter, however, she agrees with Swinburn: if you’re going to invest money in obesity prevention, it’s best to do it in younger kids.

Comments (5 of 5)

Have you ever seen kids screaming at mother to buy junk food . Through motivation and marketing techniques health professionals can get that same kid to scream for healthy foods. Marketing is not simply for corporations. We can use the same techniques.

4:42 pm September 11, 2013

Anonymous wrote :

Sociologist Massey postulates that all values are well established by age six. Any program that gets their attention before age six is effective

11:28 am July 16, 2010

Tonja Winn wrote :

I work with WIC and I agree that the preschool years is the ideal time for obesity prevention. However, the statement "Preschool kids are pretty much limited to the food given to them by adults," is key - if you have parents that are conscientious in what they feed their children obesity prevention works. If you have children that grow up in homes where fast food and high fat, high sugar snacks are the norm the child has less chance to grow up with a healthy weight. As I see it, motivating the parents to offer healthy foods is the challenge.